After Jonas Leaves, Fathers' POV
by FireEmberAsh
Summary: A take on the aftermath of Jonas leaving the community, written from Fathers' perspective. I have not read the books after THE GIVER, so please do not comment about the other books. Thank You.


Father

Jonas was gone. He wasn't in his bed. And neither was Gabe.

"Sarah! Do you know where Jonas is?" I shouted. The empty sleeping room where Jonas should've been was devoid of any evidence of where he was now. And Gabe, who had also been sleeping in Jonas's room, was missing.

"Isn't he in his room?" she asked from across the dwelling.

"He's Not! And neither is Gabe," I called out, "Meet me outside, we'll figure out what to do."

I walked from Jonas's room and out the simple brown door

I waited outside, breathing deeply, in and out to calm myself. Sarah walked out a few moments later, after I had composed my features into the calm mask I used so often around my kids.

"Do you have any idea where Jonas is?" I inquired.

"Is he at Receiver training?" she half suggested, half asked.

"No," she corrected herself, almost instantly. "That wouldn't explain why Gabe is missing. We should call the Chief Elder."

I opened the door to the dwelling, and walked to the speakers microphone.

"Sarah and I need to talk to the Chief Elder," I said.

"State your business," the speaker replied in their dry voice.

"Jonas and Gabe are missing," I told the speaker.

After a moment of surprise, the speaker finally responded,

"Thank you for calling." And that was it. The Chief Elder would be along eventually, and we would explain the situation.

"Father, is Jonas fine?" I heard a small voice ask clearly but quietly.

"Yes Lily, Jonas is fine. We're just having a little trouble finding him." I told her.

"Like when I play hide and seek with my friends?" Lily asked excitedly.

"Yes Lily," I responded automatically, telling the lie carefully. "Just like that. Now go get ready for school, while we find Jonas."

She ran off to her room to dress herself, and I began preparing for my work myself. I dressed myself with a calm efficiency, and took my pill without water. I sat down at the table to eat, and the rest of the family followed suit. Sarah began the telling of dreams with a simple

"I had no dreams last night."

Lily told her dream next, eagerly recounting how she had been bicycling, and had seen Jonas bicycling too. She had tried to catch up to him, but he kept speeding up, until he crossed the bridge out of town. That was when her story ended.

"Do you think that Jonas went Elsewhere, Father?" she asked excitedly. I jolted internally at her question, but I answered calmly.

"I hope not, Lily-Billy."

I ended the dream-telling with my own "I had no dreams" and said my goodbyes to Sarah and Lily.

I left the dwelling, and biked to the Nurturing Center. There, I greeted the Night Crew who left eagerly to sleep, and began reading their summary. Most of the Infants had slept soundly, only one waking up at any time, then falling back to sleep quickly. Odd, but good. Usually, when one Infant woke up, they cried and woke up the whole nursery.

I began the morning routine by waking up the last of the sleeping Infants, and attending to their spoiled undergarments. Next, I dressed the squirming babies, talking to each of them using their name, responding to their gurgles and babbles as if they were words, and we were having polite conversations.

Once they were all dressed, I retrieved their food from the storage bins at the back of the large building, checking each of their nutrition charts to make sure I got the right foods for each of them. This was important, because every week, a nutritionist assessed each of the Infant's growth and exercise, and made minute alterations to their diet accordingly.

I saw the Chief Elder through the clear glass doors of the Nursing Center as I handed out food, and asked one of the Assistant Nurturers to take care of the Infants while I talked to the robed elder outside. After I heard their affirmation, I walked quickly and calmly towards the translucent doors, and left the large open nursery room.

The Chief Elder began the conversation.

"You say that you cannot find Jonas? Or Gabe?" I nodded in answer. She looked me in the eyes, then motioned for me to follow him. We walked away from the Nursery Center, and I guessed that we were heading towards the Annex building.

As we walked, she explained what was to be done.

"We will first ask the Receiver of Memory if he has any knowledge of Jonas's whereabouts, then we will send out searching planes to find him. He will be reprimanded once we have found him, and promptly restrained, on house arrest in the Annex. He will be declared Lost, and we will train a new Receiver of Memory."

She explained this all in a polite tone, but I could see in her eyes that he was judging me, blaming me for Jonas's disappearance.

"Of course," I said in answer to her explanation. "That makes perfect sense." We continued walking along at a brisk pace, until we reached the House of Old and the Annex.

We entered the Annex, but saw no attendant. The Chief Elder walked confidently towards a door at the back of the Annex. She opened it and I saw a man that I vaguely recognized as the Receiver of Memory. He was old, almost as old as some of this years' released elderly. He was sitting on a simple bed near a large pile of shelves.

"Where is Jonas?" the Receiver asked in an accusatory tone.

"We were just about to ask you the same thing," the Chief Elder responded in a flat voice. The Receiver cocked his head sideways, as if confused, and asked

"So you don't know where he is?" he inquired quizzically.

"No," the Chief Elder answered. Then the Receiver began to laugh. Lightly at first, crescendoing to a booming laugh that seemed to shake the room.

"Why are you laughing?" I asked.

"Because you will never find Jonas." the Receiver said.

"Or Gabe?" I asked. Then the laughing stopped. The Receiver seemed surprised, shocked even, by this piece of information.

"He took Gabe?" the Receiver asked quietly, but resonantly, so both the Chief Elder and I could hear it. Without waiting for an answer, he said in a lethal whisper,

"What did you say to him? Why would he take Gabe without telling me?" I shrugged my shoulders at this, not knowing the answer.

The Receiver paced around the room, both the Chief Elder and I staying quietly while he thought. Then, it seemed that the answer had dawned on the old man, and his eyes lit up, then scrunched into a glare towards me.

"What releases were scheduled for today?" the Receiver asked, except it was more of a statement or accusation than an inquiry. I shrank under the weight of his glare, until I realized that there was no logical reason to do so, and stood back up tall.

"Gabriel had a release scheduled for today." I answered.

"And you told Jonas!" the Chief Elder exclaimed, and I knew that I was to be punished just as much for Jonas's actions as Jonas himself. It was against the rules to announce the release of an infant until right before the ceremony, in case anyone changed their mind or unless the ceremony was postponed or delayed for some reason. But it had been such a minor rule, such a small infraction, and no one ever really followed it. But now I knew that suddenly, I was the one in the wrong.

"I apologize for my actions, Chief Elder," I told her. I could tell that she didn't care, but she still responded with the automatic

"Thank you for your apology."

The Chief Elder walked out of the Annex room quickly, and motioned for me and the Receiver to follow.

The Chief Elder pulled out a small rectangular object, made out of a reflective metal, and started talking into it in a low voice as we walked.

"I need a search plane sent out to find two individuals. A person the size of a Twelve, and one the size of an infant. Their heat signatures should stick out against the background. If spotted, call in your catch, and send down paratroopers to tag the targets."

The Chief Elder tapped the metal object and stuck it back into her robe, into a pocket that I couldn't see.

The Receiver shook his head and said "You won't catch him. He's too smart for you. No one even knows where he is going."

The Chief Elder smiled as our group arrived at a small, indistinct building, and when we walked inside, we saw all manner of computer arrays and displays. Through one such screen we saw a landing pad, with a small plane starting up its engines. We heard a low whine as its vertical engines hovered the plane slowly upwards, and then nothing, once the silent electrical engines kicked in. Through a different screen, we could see the view that the pilot himself saw, the display that showed heat signatures against the background. It was dark right now, except for a few bright spots that were probably just heat anomalies.

We waited for what felt like hours, seeing nothing of consequence on the display, until the plane turned around when the away-trip battery ran out of power.

The Chief Elder turned away from the screen, and told us what would be our fate.

"You two shall be confined here until Jonas is returned to us, or until there is need of your services. Meals will be brought regularly, but no relief-of-pain or entertainment shall be provided at any time. Once Jonas is returned, the Elders shall decide what your permanent punishment shall be."

That was the first time that I had heard the word punishment used in context. I knew what it meant, and why its use had been discontinued. The Chief Elder walked out of the room, her robes billowing as she left the room.

The metal door to the room shut, and we were left in darkness, except for the light of the displays. The Receiver sat down on a table that supported one of the monitors, and started shuddering.

"Are you okay?" I asked, concerned for the elderly man.

"Of course I'm okay," he said in an unfamiliar tone. I accepted this at face value, and turned away to look at one of the monitors.

"That was sarcasm," the Receiver said bitterly.

"What's sarcasm?" I asked him. He looked confused, then seemed to remember something.

"It's when you say something, but you don't really mean it, as kind of a joke." the Receiver said. He seemed like he wanted to say more, but was just too tired to say it.

We didn't talk very much over the next few weeks, mostly just eating our food, and watching the monitors. It wasn't until the plane crashed that we had anything to say to each other.

What had happened was that the Chief Elder had ordered yet another plane search, after weeks of nothing. The plane had taken off as usual, its vertical propulsion setting it high enough to fall with time to activate its electric engines. That part went normally. It was what had come later that crashed it.

The plane had been banking downwards slightly, getting closer to the ground to get a better scan of the fields, when it fell into a nosedive. The Chief Elder quickly got onto the comms.

"Pull up," she told the pilot. "Pull up!" But there was no response except for a groan of pain, then static. We saw on the monitors the perspective of the pilot as the plane struck the ground nose first. An exterior camera survived the crash, somehow, and displayed on a side monitor the vision of a crater with flames licking up at a metal object.

We wondered in silence what had happened to make the pilot crash like that, but we didn't have to wonder long.

The wave of pain hit me and the Chief Elder hard. We both collapsed to the ground, our bodies betraying us. The Receiver remained standing, but he hunched forward under the weight of the memory.

I saw through a second pair of eyes a wretched place, and the word for it came to me. A battlefield. Caused by war. I saw a soldier, just a boy, bleeding terribly, and gasping for water. There were bodies littered all over the battlefield, blood pouring from various holes, the word for them escaping me. And I myself was immobilized with pain, arm bones shattered and blood oozing through my torn shirt. The vision lasted forever, but was over in seconds.

I slowly stood, not sure if I could trust my legs. The Chief Elder did the same. I remembered that the memories of a Receiver were cast out of their minds when they died, as had happened when the "failure" had died. I had received many memories then, and they were given back to the Receiver, but none of them had been this terrible.

"Did Jonas die then?" I asked. I had guessed at the answer when the memory had struck, but was sure of it now.

"No. If he had died, then all of his memories would have left, and we'd still be experiencing them." the Chief Elder answered.

Then he commanded the Receiver: "Take the memory back." The Receiver objected at first, saying

"I will not take them back. It is time for the community to act with wisdom, rather than its least important member." But then the Chief Elder pulled out a syringe filled with a clear liquid. We all recognized it as a release shot.

"You can't kill me," the Receiver said confidently. "If you do, then the memories will be released along with myself, and you will be worse off than you were before."

"But I can kill him," the Chief Elder replied, placing the syringe tip over a vein in my arm. At this, the Receiver relented. He placed his hand on the Chief Elders' shoulder, and closed his eyes. He stayed like that for a long while, then took his hand off, frustrated.

"I can't take the memory back, because there is no memory there," the Receiver said. "Jonas must be approaching Elsewhere. If he had died, then the memories would be returned to the people, but now, they are being returned to the original place where memories were kept, and I do not know how to take them back from there." There was an air of finality to this, and an air of futility to all arguments that we could have made. The Receiver was resolute.

As the days passed, more and more memories were returned to their original home, which the Receiver dubbed "ElseWhen". At first, only painful memories returned, because those were the ones that Jonas needed least in his journey, the ones that he held on to weakest, the Receiver had told us. But eventually, the good memories returned too, and when the memory of a sled ride down a hill returned, the Receiver declared that Jonas must have made it to ElseWhere.

The memories were painful, and hard to bear, but they immediately made changes to our lives. Most of the Communities' structure stayed as it was, but there were a few major changes. We no longer performed the Ceremony of release. Most people stopped taking the pill, and the Threes' Instructors started teaching the names of colors. And lastly, there was a change that can only be described to one that has experienced it themselves:

There was music.


End file.
